A.D. After Disclosure: When the Government Finally Reveals the Truth About Alien Contact (43 page)

Disclosure, as the effort to end UFO secrecy.

In the 21st century, another term,
exopolitics
, coined by researcher and writer Alfred Webre, has come into use.

Stephen Bassett, head of the Paradigm Research Group (PRG), which has advocated for UFO Disclosure since the 1990s, defines exopolitics as “the art or science of government as concerned with creating and maintaining governmental policy toward extraterrestrial-related phenomena and extraterrestrial beings.” The Exopolitics Institute, headed by Michael Salla, PhD, describes it as “an interdisciplinary scientific field, with its roots in the political sciences, that focuses on research, education and public policy with regard to the actors, institutions and processes, associated with extraterrestrial life, as well as the wide range of implications this entails through public advocacy and newly emerging paradigms.”

In other words, exopolitics involves the politics of “us” and “them.” Considering all the problems associated with human-to-human politics, imagine what mistakes have been made or could still be made in any relationships with Others.

In human-to-human politics, people never agree for long; factions and in-fighting are the norm. The same is true for exopolitics. The bottom line is how we assess ourselves, and how we assess the Others. If we cannot agree on the former, how can we possibly agree on the latter? In our world today, it is a fantasy to think people can agree on that point. Throughout the history of ufology, there have been researchers who have emphasized the dangers posed by these other beings, and probably just as many who have focused on their benevolence. In exopolitics as in national politics, you have Conservatives versus Liberals.

Most of the voices today who explicitly identify with exopolitics fall into the Liberal camp. In the first place, by advocating for UFO Disclosure, they implicitly oppose the secret-keepers in the clandestine world. Second, the very act of considering how to engage beings from elsewhere in a political relationship implies a belief in common ground. Third, contemporary proponents of exopolitics often (although not always) characterize the Others as highly evolved spiritual beings who are concerned for humanity’s positive development. If this is true, then we surely would want to move this process along. If there are technological secrets being held by the clandestine world in the form of clean and cheap energy, then we have yet another reason why Disclosure is desirable.

This is the turf staked out by “The Disclosure Project,” headed by Dr. Steven Greer. Since the 1990s, this group has periodically called for “open, secrecy-free [Congressional] hearings on the UFO/Extraterrestrial presence on and around Earth.” In addition, it calls for revealing secrets about “advanced energy and propulsion systems that, when publicly released, will provide solutions to global environmental challenges.”
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Greer argues that there are many witnesses who can testify about the reality of such covert programs and technologies, although they are afraid to come forward without help. His group also wants legislation to ban space-based weapons, focusing on a vision of space-based exploration that brings all Earth cultures together.

Greer’s attitude toward extraterrestrials, described earlier in this book, is to embrace and welcome them. Depending on how one assesses them, his program can be characterized as visionary, utopian, or dangerous.

In essentials, the same can be said for the Exopolitics Institute, headed by Dr. Michael Salla. Its philosophy is very inclusive, promoting “citizen diplomacy initiatives” for peaceful interactions with extraterrestrial civilizations that are monitoring humanity. It also supports “whistle-blowers” or even private citizens who claim to have physically interacted with extraterrestrials, or had access to covert military-corporate programs involving extraterrestrial technologies.
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Both of these groups offer hope that a post-Disclosure world will be a better place. Certainly, one would be hard-pressed to disagree with their desire to challenge the global military-intelligence-industrial complex. Basically, to give peace a chance.

If these other beings turn out to be rapacious, destructive, or otherwise a threat, as speculated earlier in this book, the argument for secrecy might well be a strong one. Why cause panic if we are helpless anyway? Under such circumstances, naturally, we would be less inclined to want to engage them in any sort of constructive political process. To such researchers who believe this is the case, the very idea of exopolitics is foolish at best, suicidal at worst.

And yet, it could be counter-argued that, even under these conditions, exopolitics is a reality. “They” are here, and are interacting with us. Even if the relationship is one of hostility, politics inevitably enters the process at some point. Von Clausewitz, the great theoretician of modern warfare, famously described war as “the continuation of policy by other means.”

Perhaps our exopolitics would benefit from fewer strongly held positions about the nature of the Others. It seems likely, anyway, that the truth lies somewhere between the extremities.

Stephen Bassett’s Paradigm Research Group (PRG) avoids discussion of the matter altogether. Instead, Bassett’s message is simple: the “truth embargo” needs to end first, and all other issues can be sorted out later. His activism has resulted in numerous annual “X-Conferences” near Washington, D.C., organizing fax campaigns on Washington, and trying to pull the world together website by website. In 2011, PRG organized a World Disclosure Day on July 8, and later in the year gathered more than 17,000 signatures for a Disclosure Petition to the White House “to formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race.” The White House policy to all petitions is to offer a formal reply once the signatures exceed 5,000.

Regarding the petition, the White House did issue a predictable statement on November 4, 2011: “The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is
no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public eye.”
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Any other answer would certainly have brought a storm of unwelcome publicity to the White House, especially in the lead-up to an election season. Still, PRG can claim credit for being the first civilian organization to elicit a formal policy position on UFOs from the White House, and has positioned itself to continue beating the drum and engaging the media on this issue.

Throughout the years, PRG’s efforts have resulted in hits and misses. Yet Bassett has been an active and forceful proponent of Disclosure, having promoted a strong movement throughout Europe and elsewhere. As of mid-2011, there were active exopolitical websites in more than 20 countries.
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Beyond that, he has encouraged others to imagine what a post-Disclosure world will look like. “It is not whether there is an extraterrestrial intelligence engaging the planet, it is what are we going to do about it?”
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Exopolitics is an idea whose time has come. Because Others are already here, then by definition exopolitics is being practiced. The fact that it is not yet being conducted openly makes no difference as to its reality. Some humans are already making decisions based on UFOs operating within the Earth’s environment. In fact, the political dialogue between Us and Them may be strained, nearly incomprehensible, and potentially dangerous. But it has been underway for a long time, and it is happening now as you read this book.

The First Exopoliticians

Given the situation of military minds of the 1940s grappling with something beyond any previous experience, we can appreciate their sense of urgency, their scramble to understand the truth, and their need to try to catch up technologically.

Such a situation would require the utmost secrecy, not only from one’s national rivals, and not only from one’s population, but also—perhaps most important—from the Others themselves.

The first exopolitical decision to be made was to keep things hidden. That dictated countless other decisions that followed, the accumulation of which created a secret world. With the same hubris that allowed pharaohs
to build colossal monuments, these men built a new world. They populated it with their trusted fellow-travelers, and resourced it with money and assets that were siphoned from the public they convinced themselves they were serving.

In time, the structure of secrecy among the human players had become otherworldly. Probably by the 1970s, they had largely moved beyond formal governmental channels of control, although government funding and military security continued to be useful. Enough breakthroughs had been made, even by then, to distance them from the civilization they had set out to defend. Homemade flying saucers? It is possible that they even had those, along with a secret space program and more.

Changing our POV. Seeing the Earth with new eyes
. “Moonbase Clarke” by Kimmo Isokoski, used with permission.

But there is more to this breakaway civilization than mere possession of flying saucers. Recall that the NSA in 1965 was 35 years ahead of the consumer world in its computing technology. May we assume that it and
other deep-black agencies are at least a few decades ahead of the world right now in a variety of key technologies? If our mainstream scientists are predicting major breakthroughs in computing, artificial intelligence, nanotech, and biotechnology by around mid-century, what is the likelihood that the classified world will achieve them sooner? What is the chance that key breakthroughs in those fields have already been made? And yet there is more to a breakaway civilization than even these developments. There is the matter of physical separateness.

Separate, Not Equal

Everyone has heard of Area 51 as a location where the human response to the Others is said to be carried out. It is by no means the only such place. There are other bases, as well as warehouses and levels in normal military and civilian locations, that belong to the breakaway civilization.

It is entirely possible that the passage of time has allowed the separateness to include deep underground facilities. In other words, Earth may be home to an underground community that is “off the grid.” A lot of good research on this has been done, most notably by the investigator Dr. Richard Sauder, who has demonstrated that the U.S. national security establishment made plans to go very deep underground no later than the 1960s. He also made it clear that for years, the technology has existed to go deep. Finally, he has exposed leaks from insiders giving information about massive, deep, clandestine bases and tunnels that traverse beneath our feet in almost labyrinthian fashion.
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If deep underground bases seem chimerical, consider the likelihood of bases deep beneath the seabeds of our world. That is, beneath the oceans themselves. Lest one dismiss this as mere fantasy, consider that the technology has existed for many years to make this a reality. There are, of course, several known examples of tunnels that go for miles beneath the ocean floor. The Channel Tunnel, or Chunnel, connecting Britain to France, is the most famous of them. Likewise, the technology to extract oxygen from the ocean has existed for more than 50 years—it is through this technology that nuclear submarines can stay submerged for months at a time. If you have enough oxygen and a source of power—for instance,
a small, portable nuclear or geothermal generator—you have enough to get started on a large base that can be rather comfortable below the ocean floor.
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In addition to Sauder’s well-documented research, there are other tantalizing links to the underground world.